I never finished this e-mail and it's rather late to send now, but it responds to what I see as buying into the new imperialist rhetoric (humanitarian reasons).

"Internationalizing the Iraq problem" is barely-concealed double-speak for enlisting other rich-country governments to keep the Iraqi people from having any sort of independence.

The problem is the person endorsing Jacob Weisberg's view (below) is a terrific, indefatigable anti-war organizer. You can see my e-mail's not ready to send to such a person, and won't be, but I wanted to get this view out there.

“Our strategic goal is all children should access to communications knowledge within a frame of equality.” -- President Tabaré Vázquez

1. President Tabaré Vázquez officially announced his and the country's intention to enter into OLPC and to provide every child in Uruguay with a laptop within two years.

Why isn't the United States part of this program yet? Why aren't we guaranteeing funding for the world?

The One Laptop Per Child group is a great example of what people who give a damn working together can do. Read the entire update e-mail from Walter Bender if you're strange like me and find inspiration and hope in the details:

Most of all, vote! The multiple four-way debates were a glimpse of functioning politics. We owe ourselves a high turnout. Feel free to forward to anyone who has run out of reading material, including spam.

Last thing first: remember to flip the ballot over, where you will have the option (in Natick and a couple hundred other towns) to give your sense as a citizen that the U.S. should end the occupation of Iraq, which is causing the deaths of two or three times as many Iraqis *a day* as long-time CIA asset Saddam Huissein was just sentenced to death for killing.

On reading the Redwall book, "Loamhedge" by Brian Jaques and read recently before that, "Lord Brocktree".

I feel like I'm a communist commissar, finding fault with what is essentially children's literature. But the ideological implications of the Redwall series are just not possible for me to ignore. Plus John Hockenberry's now sensitized me to the portrayal of the disabled. I do want to make clear that I don't want to ban any books, but if I were writing similar books: